London, Dec 5 (IANS) Germany has successfully defused a 1.8-tonne World War II bomb in the Rhine river after about 45,000 residents of Koblenz were evacuated from homes, hospitals and even a prison, a media report said Monday.
The British aerial bomb is said to be one of the biggest found in the country.
It caused huge disruption across Koblenz as patients were rolled out of hospitals in wheelchairs and carried out on stretchers, the Daily Mail reported Monday.
Shopping streets in the city centre were sealed off and even a prison was emptied. Sports halls were readied to accommodate residents for several hours.
The bomb was uncovered partly because of a fall in water levels after a dry November. It was surrounded by 350 sandbags prior to being defused, the Mail said.
In response to Nazi air raids on civilian targets in Poland and later London, the Allies dropped about 1.9 million tonnes of bombs on Germany in an effort to cripple the country’s industry. The allied raids killed some 500,000 people.
Koblenz, located in western Germany at the picturesque intersection of the rivers Rhine and Mosel, was a target in 1944 and 1945. Most of the city was destroyed. It has now been completely rebuilt.
